Friday Five – Twitter’s tiff with Instagram while the Pope waits for verification

Time for our irreverent glance back at the week that was. Featuring an awesome airport timelapse, the Pope’s arrival on Twitter and some handy Git tips

We’re closing in on Christmas (or the equally important
Eclipse Git move) and it’s fair to say we’re a little excited at
JAX Towers, likely fuelled by tonight’s work Christmas
party.

There’s not an Ebenezer to be seen in the editorial team, so
with festive cheer, we offer five assorted gifts you may have
missed this week whilst frantically searching for Christmas
presents.

1. Follow Friday – @pontifex

If you somehow missed it, Pope Benedict XVI became a social media
node by signing up to Twitter. Whether he’ll be up all night
tweeting from the Vatican remains to be seen, but we can expect a
debut tweet on December 12th. As well as opening up the English
account @pontifex tweets will be mirrored on Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German,Polish, Arabic, and French accounts,
bolstering the Pope’s social reach.

At the time of writing, Pope Benedict XVI had acquired 483,416
Followers since Monday’s signup, but had yet to receive his
verified Twitter tick. There was also a flurry of people attempting
to get blocked by His Holiness. The comments on this
Verge piece are pretty hilarious too.

This appears to be yet another company refusing to buy into
Twitter’s changing guidelines in controlling the display of tweets
and how developers access their API. How much this decision was
spurred by Facebook’s role with Instagram remains to be seen,
butInstagram Chief Executive Kevin Systrom assured
attendees at LeWeb that this was his call and not
Facebook’s.

“The press has a history of painting things this way. We have
a really good relationship with Twitter,” he added.

It’s undeniable that it’s been an uneasy relationship between
Twitter and Instagram since Facebook’s acquisition of the
photo-sharing service back in April. Expect a gradual severance
over the coming year.